"Comrade Trotzky told us after his return from the front that there he had seen hundreds of comrades who deny themselves everything, who do not eat themselves satisfied. They live on the small rations, and are thereby reduced to skin and bone, and still they work very hard, in order to save the honor of our party at the front. But there is no doubt that alongside of them among the soldiers there is a different stratum. Yes, a whole stratum. No matter how numerojjg this stratum is, it is there. The people conceive of their rights and their duties differently; These are the elements who rob the party of their credit which has been won through heavy sacrifices and the hard work of tens of thousands of our first and intermediate party members. Certain communists, who have been mobilized and sent to the front, work and live there in such a manner that they with right can complain."
I could mention many other instances which have been told me by people, (communists and non-communists) returning from the Polish front, but I had much rather allow only Comrade Zinoviev speak, because he least of any can be suspected of painting it blacker than it is. At all events, the conditions have to carry part of the blame for the defeats on the Polish front.
Hereby the honest intentions of the communists will in no manner be impugned, but we shall rather demonstrate that the Red Army in itself is no socialist body, as Trotzky falsely designates it, but that it is an army like any other army and can be nothing else, because it cannot disavow its character of militarism.
And the population realizes that such is the Red Army. Outwardly, for combatting capitalist reaction it cannot have such an effect, and as the instances quoted show us, it has no such effect. As I learnt in the gouvernement of Poltava, after the Poles were driven out of Poltava and Kiev, the Red Army was in the first moment greeted with joy. But this joy did not last long. The peasants were oppressed in the extreme by the Polish troops. They made a rebellion against them, and when the Red Army came, it was received as a liberator. But as the war lasted longer, the Soviet government was compelled to take 'the- grain from: the peasants, in order to be able to feed the army. Ukraine, which they now again held in their hands and, .above "all;-; the -gouvernement of Poltava which ranks among the richest grain- countries of the earth, was very welcome to the exhausted Soviet government, and it demanded the grain from the peasants. For that reason the peasants are now as enraged against the Soviet government as they formerly were against the Poles.